Stephen Hillenburg Career

He was a marine biology teacher at what is now the Orange County Ocean Institute. He worked as a marine biologist from 1984-1987. In 1987 Hillenburg decided to pursue a career in animation, his second lifelong passion. He made several short films, two of which were awarded and played in animation film festivals internationally. His two short films The Green Beret (1991) (which was featured in an episode of "Liquid Television"; MTV misspelled his name "Hillenberg" in the credits) and Wormholes (1992) became popular shorts in several film festivals - and received various awards.

While still attending animation school, Hillenburg received a job on the children's TV series Mother Goose & Grimm from 1991 to 1993. When attending the California Institute of the Arts he made his thesis film called 'Wormholes' (which was funded by the Princess Grace Foundation). Hillenburg displayed his films at various animation festivals. Joe Murray, creator of Rocko's Modern Life, met Hillenburg at an animation festival[4] and asked Hillenburg if he would be a director on the show, to which he agreed. Hillenburg joined the Nickelodeon animated series as a writer, producer, and storyboard artist. While working on Rocko's Modern Life, Hillenburg became friends with Tom Kenny, who would later become the voice of SpongeBob, and future SpongeBob collaborators Doug Lawrence, Martin Olson, Paul Tibbit and others.

SpongeBob SquarePants

In 1989 at the California Institute of the Arts, Hillenburg wrote a comic book called "The Intertidal Zone" about sea creatures in tidepools. The comic was "hosted" by a sponge, which Hillenburg initially drew as a natural sponge but changed to a square sponge because it looked funnier. He showed it to Martin Olson, a friend and comedy writer working on Rocko's Modern Life. Olson loved it and suggested that Hillenburg rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series.[5] When Rocko's Modern Life ended in 1996, Hillenburg began developing the concept, and in 1997 teamed with some of his former "Rocko" colleagues to design the show's backgrounds and characters.

In 1998, Hillenburg pitched the show to Nickelodeon, using an aquarium, character models, a theme song and the storyboard that would become the pilot episode, "Help Wanted." The main character's name was originally "SpongeBoy", but since the name was copyrighted, he changed it to SpongeBob. Hillenburg used some of the things he had created for Rocko's Modern Life, in SpongeBob. An example is using short clips of live action footage.[citation needed] Nickelodeon executives bought the pitch and the series premiered on May 1, 1999, and the following episodes started airing on July 17, 1999.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was released in the U.S. on November 19, 2004. It received generally good reviews from critics and successfully grossed over $140,000,000 worldwide. The film was intended to be the series finale, and creator Hillenburg announced that he would resign[6] and gave the post to Tim Hill. However, in 2005, it was announced that SpongeBob would be continuing with a fourth season due in May. Stephen Hillenburg was rumoured to have left the series; however, he did not actually leave the show but resigned from his position as the show's executive producer.[6]